Two years ago, Starbucks was in the middle of their "8 Weeks of Bold" promotion. On April 5, 2010, Verona was the featured coffee. I have an old poster from that era which is featured here. Still looking back at this, I loved this promotion. It was totally coffee inspired. It was fun to collect the stickers. And, I liked the marketing materials too. Just as a reminder, to participate in the 8 weeks of bold coffee, a customer picked up a "Something Bold is Brewing" tasting sheet, and collected stickers for each week's coffee. At the end of the promo, you could turn in the sticker-sheet for a pound of whole bean coffee. A customer had to buy a tall size (or larger) cup of bold drip to receive the sticker for the sheet.
As I recall, every customer was allowed one substitution coffee with Pike Place Roast. What I mean is that if I went into the store and I really did not like Sumatra, I could ask to substitute Pike Place Roast, and then still get a sticker for Sumatra. The promo rules, as I recall them, strictly allowed for just one "substitution."

The 8 week promotion kicked off with Organic Yukon Blend. Here's an official MyStarbucksIdea.com blog post on the kick-off coffee:

On MyStarbucksIdea.com official blogs, the 8 weeks of bold was sometimes referred to as a "tasting club" and customers were encouraged to share their thoughts about the coffees on the official blogs.

When the promo was brand new, I wrote a blog post article about it here, and looking back I wrote in a rather silly tone of voice! Does anyone else remember this promotion? On the other side of this Verona poster, Cafe Estima was the featured coffee. I wish I had a few more of these posters. If you have one of these in your house, and you want to part with it, I'd be very interested. Thank you very much to the partner who sent me this.

I categorized this blog article as a "Starbucks History Lesson" because although it was two years ago, it is now recent history. And it's strange how two years ago seems like a long time ago in Starbucks years. Click on the Starbucks History Lesson link for more episodes in the history of Starbucks.

Here's a few more photos:

Here's the same poster after being custom framed. Thank you very much to Molly at Seattle Custom Framing for the framing and most of the photos in this article. We used Conservation Clear® glass which does a great job of providing UV protection, but is moderately reflective. Museum glass would have cut down on the reflection but it is quite a bit pricier. I think it looks great framed - Molly does an amazing job of picking out exactly the right mats and frames, and custom builds the frames to make it look perfect.